I think the industry is getting frustrated about people who prefer full screen and complain about the black bars in widescreen. I have a copy of True Grit here, and on the box it says: "This Film is presented in 'Widescreen' format. The Black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are normal." I've seen statements before, but I've never seen it so bluntly stated on a package before.

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They still sell 4:3 cropped DVDs over there? They never did take off here and I haven't seen one in probably a decade. Mind you Widescreen TVs were standard here long before HD took off.

I think the industry is getting frustrated about people who prefer full screen and complain about the black bars in widescreen. I have a copy of True Grit here, and on the box it says: "This Film is presented in 'Widescreen' format. The Black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are normal." I've seen statements before, but I've never seen it so bluntly stated on a package before.

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I've seen that statement pretty much on every DVD ever that was presented in Widescreen, hell some of them even have a titlecard with it before the movie when you hit "play."

I think the industry is getting frustrated about people who prefer full screen and complain about the black bars in widescreen. I have a copy of True Grit here, and on the box it says: "This Film is presented in 'Widescreen' format. The Black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are normal." I've seen statements before, but I've never seen it so bluntly stated on a package before.

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I've seen that statement pretty much on every DVD ever that was presented in Widescreen, hell some of them even have a titlecard with it before the movie when you hit "play."

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Yea, and most of them, after you hit PLAY have the Green Screen that says something like "This Motion Picture has been formatted to fit your screen" (The assumption being that "your screen" is square)

They still sell 4:3 cropped DVDs over there? They never did take off here and I haven't seen one in probably a decade. Mind you Widescreen TVs were standard here long before HD took off.

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Pan and scan DVDs were big when DVD was big, but now that TVs are widescreen and all Blu-rays come in OAR, I can't imagine there's still a market for two screen size versions of the same movie on DVD, especially when there's so little shelf space.

I think the industry is getting frustrated about people who prefer full screen and complain about the black bars in widescreen. I have a copy of True Grit here, and on the box it says: "This Film is presented in 'Widescreen' format. The Black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are normal." I've seen statements before, but I've never seen it so bluntly stated on a package before.

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They still sell 4:3 cropped DVDs over there? They never did take off here and I haven't seen one in probably a decade. Mind you Widescreen TVs were standard here long before HD took off.

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Nah, don't think they still do specifically. I think it's all Widescreen now, though I had bought a movie pack at Costco once, and one of the movies was fullscreen instead of widescreen, so I think there are still some left, but it's getting rarer. It was likely leftover stock packaged together.

@JD Yeah you have to watch when you buy at Wal-Mart. It's one of the only places that still sells both widescreen and 4:3 versions of recent movies. But the format should be clearly marked on the back of the box. Similarly, if you're buying, say, the first season of Kung Fu from the 1970s or some movie from 1939 and the box indicates 16:9 letter boxing, then you know something is amiss.

Alex

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Yeah, once I saw the "this film has been altered from it's original format" screen, I looked again and it turns out that it did say Full Frame in tiny letters that blend in with The Hulk's pants if you don't look closely on the bottom corner of the case. I just didn't think to look when I grabbed it because it was the end of Black Friday, so I was worn out, and I thought that it was new enough that they never would have done a FF version. My mom pointed out the other day that BF stuff tends to be old stuff that they drag out and try to sell off cheap, so I'm thinking that's probably what this was. I did still enjoy the movie, and I probably watch it more times, I just wish I had thought to check the box, because if I had known it was FF, I probably would have dug around longer to see if I could find a Widescreen version, or just no gotten it.

The Truman Show was intentionally filmed in an almost full frame ration of 1.66:1 because that's what the director wanted (he figured it was a TV show after all.)

When I watch Star Trek episodes from the various shows using Netflix on the Wii on my widescreen TV I always use widescreen. I find the black bars on the sides very very annoying (yet I never mind the ones at the top for films) What I've found is that is that while technically the picture might be stretched, it's not noticeable enough and actually it looks great. that's the only exception to my OAR rule.

I still remember when, shortly after Fellowship of the Ring came out, I was visiting a couple of friends and they said we could watch it together. I thought this would be cool.

Well, they'd gotten the full-frame rather than widescreen, though unintentionally. To add insult to injury, we were watching it on a 15-17" monitor. Not LCD either, I don't believe.

Probably the most horrible conditions under which I've ever tried to watch a movie, and that includes my old 13" television. I'm glad I'd seen the movie before, as it was impossible to take it seriously under these conditions.

I had a friend back when Widescreen DVDs were just starting to come out who hated them because he insisted the black bars were cutting off part of the picture and the "Full Frame" versions were the whole picture. I have a feeling he probably wasn't the only one who thought that.

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But I think there are a few films out there actually shot in 4:3 then were cropped for theatrical release. It's been a while since I read the article and need to do some research...

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I think films shot in 'Super-35' or something they called it. I seem to recall 'Terminator 2' was shot this way.

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You're correct that Terminator 2 was shot with Super-35. However, you're a little confused about the process involved. The Super 35 film actually has more picture than either the final widescreen or 4:3 version. It allowed James Cameron to "crop" for both the widescreen and 4:3 versions. [As a result, the widescreen version has some extra picture not seen in the 4:3 version, and the 4:3 version has some extra picture not seen in the widescreen version.]

Terminator 2 is actually one of the few films in which the Director was able to plan out both the widescreen and 4:3 version of his films (rather than having some random producer later come in and do a pan and scan of the widescreen print).

If I'm not mistaken, Robert Zemeckis filmed much of his films (most notably the Back to the Future Trilogy) with the "full-screen"/"wide-screen" issue in mind. The "FS" version of the movies makes the transition well with most of the relevant action taking place in the center of the screen and the FS or the WS version simply adding extraneous and irrelevant information on top and bottom or the sides respectively.

I think the worst format is "Pan and Scan" which arguably FS more or less is when done to a WS movie. Ugh. Growing up my parents would always rent videotapes were pretty much universally 4:3 in the day for home viewing on a TV, though I suspect WS versions of select movies would have been available. Growing up I never minded this and like many diluted people was bugged by the "black bars" on the top and bottom of the screen when watching a WS movie. But when all you have is a 36" 4:3 TV playing a movie displayed in a very cinematic 2:1 format can be very troublesome.

Not long after getting into only watching things in OAR I saw a P&S version of a movie and the artificial camera movements in it became very obvious.

It's very different today, obviously and with 16:9 TVs becoming more popular the WS issue becomes a smaller one and more of an issue anymore is when films with a different AR are shown on a 16:9 TV.

But I will admit that I'm not a fan of watching 4:3 DVDs on my TV the black bars on either side of the TV are harder to take and, in fact, on my TV set to 4:3 they're gray bars.

The recent TNG "Next Level" Blu-Ray does offer black on either side (a bit less distracting to watch) and the various "stretching" settings on my player don't do well on the BD disc (The "smartly stretched" option isn't available that stretches the edges more than the center. Instead it's either a zoom or a stretch that stretches the entire picture evenly.) I suspect this is a function of either a limitation with Blu-Ray itself or the particular disc. The player has no problems doing the "smart stretch" for 4:3 DVDs.

In the end I say things should be presented in OAR and then the end-user can make the adjustments needed to "fill their screen" either by zooming or stretching the picture.

Oy, I still remember reading up at Widescreen Advocacy websites back when this was more of an issue, and the most entertaining FAQ question was in regards to those who wanted advice regarding the black bars, because they were found distracting.

The FAQ suggested watching the movie in a dark room in which the black bars would be less noticeable. As though one was watching the movie in a movie theater.

I think the industry is getting frustrated about people who prefer full screen and complain about the black bars in widescreen. I have a copy of True Grit here, and on the box it says: "This Film is presented in 'Widescreen' format. The Black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are normal." I've seen statements before, but I've never seen it so bluntly stated on a package before.

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They still sell 4:3 cropped DVDs over there? They never did take off here and I haven't seen one in probably a decade. Mind you Widescreen TVs were standard here long before HD took off.

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I think it's because a 2.35:1 film still has black bars even on a widescreen TV and a lot of our (US) channels will crop films to 1.85:1 (or 1.78:1 or whatever...) to fill the screens.

I had a friend back when Widescreen DVDs were just starting to come out who hated them because he insisted the black bars were cutting off part of the picture and the "Full Frame" versions were the whole picture. I have a feeling he probably wasn't the only one who thought that.

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I shouldn't laugh but that's funny.

Once upon a time I was a manager for RadioShack. I remember a customer coming in to the store thinking their DVD player was defective because of those black bars.

And for me, it's widescreen all the way... when the option exists of course.